Oktoberfest Dinner & Brew Cruise on MI Princess

Downtown Manistee’s 3rd Annual Hops and Props on the river was a weekend long celebration of beer, boats, music and food. The festivities began Friday evening with a kickoff reception at the Boathouse grill, with events throughout the day on Saturday and wrapping up on Sunday morning with the Boater’s Brunch in the lobby of the Ramsdell Inn. Featured events included a beer tent, art and boat shows, and a series of tap takeovers throughout the downtown area.

CraftBeer.com has named the original HopCat in Grand Rapids, Mich., among its Top 5 Great American Beer Bars for 2014 and No. 1 Beer Bar in the North Central Region.

Founders Brewing Co. loves to keep people guessing each year with their popular Backstage Series release, not revealing specifics as to which beer will be released or on what date until the last possible minute. The recipes often evolve from various taproom-only releases made available throughout the year and their new pilot small batch system has served as an incubator as of late for many of these new test-run brews. This year’s earlier release of Smoked Porter is an example. Also this year, the taproom featured a new series of “SpyPA” released which included such favorites as Sleeper Cell and Infiltrator leading up to and hinting at this year’s second Backstage Series release Dissenter.

A beautiful Saturday afternoon in downtown Grand Rapids, and Founders Taproom, even the Beer Garden is closed? Well, of course, this must be Founders Fest 2014 with the streets closed down surrounding the brewery filled with street performers, art, food, non-stop music, and of-course Founders world-renowned beer!